


Lines in the Ice

by downtheroadandupthehill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, figure skating, ice dance, this is literally an ice dance AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:06:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtheroadandupthehill/pseuds/downtheroadandupthehill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“At least I’ll be able to work on my basics with Jon until we find someone better,” Sansa says airily, just as Jon emerges from the locker room and walks up beside Robb and Luwin at the boards.</p>
<p>“Trying to replace me already?” he jokes, but the uncomfortable twist of his lips belies his weak attempt at humor. Sansa does a quick assessment of her temporary partner. His curly hair is a mussed-up mess—he needs a haircut desperately, Sansa thinks—and he wears a faded t-shirt that looks like it’s been slept in. She doubts he’ll last long—they might as well put the word out that she’s looking for a new partner now.</p>
<p>Or, Sansa needs a new ice dance partner and Jon steps in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lines in the Ice

It feels strange without Robb beside her. Sansa isn’t alone, of course—Coach Luwin is at the boards, Robb right next to him and leaning on his crutches. Sansa figured the one benefit of injury would be no more five a.m. practices, but Robb is so used to waking up early after years and years of it, and she supposes he’d rather be at the rink than sitting at home watching cartoons with Rickon.

“We’re a team, Sansa,” he’d told her earlier that morning, as she packed her skate bag—she’d almost brought Robb’s along too, out of habit—in the backseat of the car, when he insisted that he would go with her.

_We’re not, not anymore_ , she wanted to say, but bit her tongue. It’s not the first time Robb’s broken his ankle, and it shouldn’t be insurmountable. But all the doctors he’s been to think otherwise. It’s just a broken ankle for anyone else, but in ice dance it’s everything. A year or two off of competition means the judges will forget about them, and they won’t get the scores they need or maybe even the ones that they ought to earn. It’s tricky, ice dance, and not altogether fair. And the U.S. field is too deep for Sansa to afford that much time off, out of sight and out of mind. She and Robb finished fourth at their first senior Nationals, just missing the Worlds team. It was a start though, getting them two Grand Prix spots and building momentum for a breakout second season. The momentum will be lost now that Robb can’t compete, and it’s up to her and someone else to build it back up again. She hopes the federation will let her keep the two Grand Prix spots without Robb.

The Olympics feel a long three years away, but three years of steady competition means building credibility and reputation that they can’t afford to lose. Not they. _She_ , now that Robb has called it quits. But they’re still a team, he’d said.

She’s not alone on the ice, though it certainly feels that way as she steps onto it while Robb stays behind the boards. Across the rink, Jeyne Poole and Theon Greyjoy, Luwin’s other ice dance team, practice their footwork. Jeyne’s pretty and always keeps the beat but Theon has weak, shallow edges. There’s a reason why Robb and Sansa moved up to seniors while Jeyne and Theon stayed in juniors. But Sansa stays out of their way while she skates around the rink to warm up. It’s strange without Robb in sync beside her.

After several laps, Sansa stops in front of Luwin and Robb and crosses her arms. “What now?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. She’s aware she’s acting like a bit of a brat, but it’s five in the morning for a pointless practice. “What am I supposed to work on without a partner?”

Robb’s looking at his phone, but at Sansa’s question he glances up at her and grins. “You will have a partner. He’s running late, but he’s on his way. It’s been a few years since Jon has had five a.m. practice sessions.”

“Your Jon? Jon Snow?” She knows Jon from years at the rink and his presence at many Stark family dinners, but they’ve never moved past polite conversation with one another. In the afternoons he teaches the youth basic skills class that Robb and Sansa have to share the ice with for their afternoon practices. “When was the last time he skated properly?”

Robb shrugs. “It’s been, what, two years or so since Ygritte quit on him, but it’s not as if he’s forgotten how. If it doesn’t work out, at least he’s someone to train with until we can hold partner tryouts.”

This isn’t the first time than Sansa has wanted to slap Robb for being so cavalier about what was—up until two weeks ago— _their_ career, their dream. He doesn’t even act upset about the fact that he’s injured and being replaced. Sansa wishes he would. She thinks about how she would act if their roles were reversed and Sansa ended up forever sidelined. She’d probably feel tempted to scratch the eyes out of whatever girl replaced her next to Robb.

She can’t complain about having someone to train with though. “At least I’ll be able to work on my basics with Jon until we find someone better,” she says airily, just as Jon emerges from the locker room and walks up beside Robb and Luwin at the boards.

“Trying to replace me already?” he jokes, but the uncomfortable twist of his lips belies his weak attempt at humor. Sansa does a quick assessment of her temporary partner. His curly hair is a mussed-up mess—he needs a haircut desperately, Sansa thinks—and he wears a faded t-shirt that looks like it’s been slept in. She doubts he’ll last long—they might as well put the word out that she’s looking for a new partner now.

Feeling Robb’s glare, she manages to smile sweetly at Jon. “Sorry Jon. I appreciate the favor, really. It’ll be great to have a partner to train with for the time being.”

He just grunts in reply and leans down to take off his skate guards and set them on the floor before stepping out onto the ice. At least his skates look clean and well-worn in, Sansa considers, because there’s nothing more irritating than dirty skates or dealing with someone else’s boot problems. “Sorry I’m a little late,” he offers as he glides over her side.

“No problem!” she says, keeping her voice bright and the fake smile on her face. “Thanks again for even being here.”

“You and Robb were beginning to learn the new short dance pattern,” Luwin begins, looking between her and Jon uncertainly.

“That’s probably too difficult for Jon,” Sansa says. “We should probably start with basic holds.” Robb glares at her again. “What? Everyone has to start somewhere.”

“Ravensburger Waltz, right? Three-turns in open hold, you twizzle under my arm, mohawk into closed hold?” Jon asks.

“Those are the first few steps, yeah!” Robb breaks in. Sansa wishes he didn’t look so thrilled. Knowing the first steps of a short dance pattern is nothing impressive.

Now that Jon is beside her on the ice, she sizes him up again. He’s tall, taller than Robb, but not _too_ tall to be impossible. Even so, learning to skate with someone with longer limbs than a previous partner is trickier, as far as synchronicity goes and learning the movements of each other’s bodies. Loras Tyrell is more of a height with Robb. They’d competed against each other as juniors, but she’d heard he was looking for a new partner. She tells herself to ask her mother to make a phone call out to Colorado Springs when she gets home from practice this evening.

“We can work on the holds while we do the steps,” Jon says, and Sansa recognizes that continuing to be difficult about it won’t accomplish anything. She’s never done the Ravensburger Waltz before, and she needs to learn it regardless of whom she ends up competing with. As much as she’d been looking forward to doing it with Robb, because their Paso Doble last season had not gone over well with judges. People expected Paso Dobles to be sexy, and brother-sister partners could never accomplish that—unless you were reigning World Champions Cersei and Jaime Lannister of course, whose pristine technique, natural talent, and Olympic gold medals overshadowed what should or shouldn’t be done. But a waltz would’ve been easy for Sansa and Robb, more elegant and proper.

“Alright.” She hopes she sounds genial instead of echoing the bitterness she truly feels. “Open hold.”

Sansa moves so that she’s standing hip-to-hip with Jon. He smells clean, like soap, even if he has next to nothing else going for him. Jon turns his head to look at her.

“Is this okay?” His arms hang at his sides.

_Stop being so earnest_ , Sansa wants to growl. This is ice dance, not a prom date. In answer, she takes his hand. Larger, rougher, and colder than Robb’s, but his palm isn’t sweaty and that is a point in his favor. Automatically, his free arm goes to her back. Firm, but relaxed, not too tight. Adequate. Letting someone else touch her feels strange to Sansa, eighteen years old and she’s never even been on a date. Practices keep her too busy for boys. Everything about ice dance is easy and comfortable with Robb—and she’s gotten used to the usual groping of their choreographer as he shifts her position into that just-right place on the ice. But being in a dance hold with someone new just doesn’t feel right. Almost intimate, when it’s not her older brother.

Sansa and Jon breathe into each other’s faces. He’s not bad-looking, so there’s that—he never would’ve made it as far as he did in ice dance if he was ugly though. Grey eyes, dark hair in curls that girls likely swoon over. Even the beard isn’t so bad up close, and Sansa can feel from here how muscled Jon is underneath the wrinkled t-shirt. He’s evidently kept in shape even if he hasn’t competed in two years. She wonders if he has a girlfriend who will be jealous of them. The benefit of competing with your sibling your entire life is no one getting jealous. Loras Tyrell is prettier than Jon though, and everyone knows _he_ doesn’t have a jealous girlfriend for a potential new partner to contend with.

She places her hand on Jon’s shoulder, gives it a gentle squeeze. “Open hold, remember? Not facing each other,” she says. She looks at Robb and Luwin and puts on her best, crowd-winning smile. “Call out the steps as we go!”

Their movement isn’t fluid, and every few steps they end up nearly tripping over one another’s skates. Sansa doesn’t fall though—Jon’s arm tightens around her every time she threatens to, so he’s better than Robb in that respect. Learning a new pattern is a necessary evil, starting slow and awkward for weeks until they can put all the steps together into a cohesive flow. There’s no magic to it now, no grace, but Sansa takes this opportunity to commit the feeling of the steps to memory, focusing on that instead of her new partner. Her elegance comes naturally—extending her limbs and always remembering to point her toes—but the technicalities are what she loves most. Practicing every little subtlety and nuance until she can make it look easy. The “jumpers,” singles and pairs skaters, get all the glory, but she’ll take the difficulty of perfecting and refining a series of compulsory steps any day.

There’s nothing perfect and refined about Sansa and Jon today. Realistically, it isn’t Jon’s fault. But she thinks Robb would’ve done better, although she’s too polite to say so after practice as they skate back to the boards in silence.

“Not bad, you two,” Robb says, shaking Jon’s hand. He’d stayed for the entire three hours, occasionally calling out suggestions for better hand and blade placements as if he was the coach instead of Luwin. Her coach gives Sansa her skate guards as she steps off the ice, and he isn’t smiling like Robb is. When Robb begins shepherding Jon toward the locker room before he’s even taken off his skates, Sansa knows she’s in for it. She sits down and begins to tug at the laces of her skates.

“You remember ice dance is a sport for two people, don’t you, Sansa?” Luwin asks, sitting down beside her. His tone is kind. Luwin is kind even through the worst of practices and competitions; Sansa and Robb wouldn’t have skated their whole lives under his tutelage if he wasn’t. Some skaters need someone to yell at them, but Sansa has always preferred a gentle touch. “You tried to do the steps as if you were all alone out there.”

A piece of hair falls into Sansa’s face as she leans over to focus more intently on her laces. She blows it out of her eyes. “This is only temporary. I came here to learn the pattern, so that’s what I tried to do.”

“You don’t want to give Jon a chance at being your permanent partner? He lives here, has skated here his whole life. It would certainly make the transition to a new partner easier for everyone.”

Sansa pulls off one of her skates before starting on the next one. “I don’t want a new partner. But since I have to have one, I only want the best. Not someone who’s been slumming around an ice rink for forever after his partner left him.”

Luwin hums thoughtfully. “I don’t think you even watched him even though he was right in front of you,” he muses. “It’s been a long time since Jon has skated with a partner, but he did very well today. He didn’t take his eyes off you, and he has excellent knees.”

_The best knees in the business_ , Robb told her in the car on their way to practice. Sansa had rolled her eyes, assuming he was trying to cheer her up by selling her on his friend. In truth, Luwin’s right: she barely paid attention to anything Jon did while they skated together.

“I’d like you to give Jon another chance tomorrow morning. Next time, watch him.”

Sansa looks up at her coach. Robb might be a fool who thinks he’s an ice dance matchmaker, but Luwin wouldn’t steer her wrong. He’d coached Jon for years, too. Besides, she doubt he’ll let her try out with someone new until she gives Jon a real shot. So she nods. “Fine. Tomorrow.”

…..

Jon pulls furiously at the knot in his laces while he listens to his best friend’s laughter echo in the locker room. “I told you this was a stupid idea,” Jon grumbles.

“It wasn’t as bad as you think! For your first time together, anyway.”

“She hates me.”

“Sansa doesn’t hate _you_. She barely knows you. She just hates this whole situation, and hates me most for being injured, but since you’re the one skating with her, you’ve just got to put up with it.”

“I don’t think I’ll be skating with her much longer. I just did this as a favor for you.”

Jon watches Robb roll his eyes. “As if you haven’t been dying to compete again. You spent so long whining and mourning after Ygritte went gallivanting off to college and a normal life that no one else wanted to skate with you. That’s your own fault. But I notice you haven’t quit skating yet, have you?”

“I never said I wanted to start training and competing again.” Jon tears his skate off. He’d throw it on the floor—or at Robb’s head—if a new one wouldn’t be so expensive. Instead he tucks it into his skate bag, which isn’t nearly as satisfying.

“Sure, which is why you practice all the time on your own and can still do everything perfectly. You were fine out there with Sansa, really.” Robb gathers his crutches under one arm and eases himself onto the bench beside Jon.

Jon keeps glaring at him. “Why don’t you skate with her? I wouldn’t mind it if this was just a temporary thing. You broke your ankle again but it’s been fine before—it’s not like you’re dead.”

Robb sighs and looks down at his lap, at the cast around his right foot. Jon watches his hands ball into fists. “It’s shot. I’m through. It’ll heal and the cast’ll be off and I’ll be fine, but the strain of training is too much for it. I’ll be in and out constantly if I keep trying to compete. Never consistent enough for Sansa and I to have a real chance. You know how it works. But Sansa shouldn’t have to give up just because I do.”

Jon immediately feels bad for bringing it up. It hadn’t been easy for Robb to do, of course. That was the name of the figure skating game: you could be rising star one day and finished the next. Competing in a sport performed entirely on a half-centimeter of steel atop unforgiving ice means that nothing is certain. Jon hadn’t been forced out like Robb was—that had been his own decision. No wonder Robb thought he should be grateful to get the opportunity to skate again, and even more grateful for a partner like Sansa. Sansa and Robb had a more-than-decent senior season, finishing higher at Nationals than Jon and Ygritte ever had. Even if she showed up at Skate America with a has-been like Jon, the judges and the federation would pay attention.

“I don’t want to guilt you into anything though,” Robb looks up at him and continues. “You’re still a great skater, and I know you’d be good with Sansa. Good _to_ her, too. I don’t want to see my sister skating with some asshole who yells at her every time she makes a mistake or tells her to lose a few pounds just because he’s too tired to lift her that day. She puts enough pressure on herself as it is. But if you’re done with ice dance, I understand. Me and Mom and Luwin will find her a decent partner. It doesn’t have to be you, if you don’t want it to be.”

Jon makes an effort to crack a smile for him and gently nudges his shoulder. “I don’t know, Robb. That sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to guilt me into it.”

Robb punches him in the arm. He’s grinning again now, and Jon feels relieved. “I’m not though, really. If you want to perform and compete again, do it for you. Sansa and I are just giving you the chance because you’ve probably started missing it.”

Jon can’t stop the incredulous rise of his eyebrows.

“Fine, fine. Luwin and I are giving you the chance,” Robb backpedals. “Luwin because he knows you’re wasting your talent, and me because you’re my friend. Sansa will come around. She’s just being stubborn because she’s angry at me.”

_Wasting your talent_. Luwin had told him that himself last year, after Jon’s last partner tryout. A pretty blonde singles skater named Val had flown out from Vancouver to try skating with him. She’d lost her triple jumps and wanted to give ice dancing a try. She didn’t even know what a choctaw was but Jon went through the tryout anyway. After she left the building, Jon gave Luwin his answer: a resounding no. It wasn’t Val’s fault, really, although she clearly wasn’t meant for ice dance. He’d dismissed far better potential partners just the same. _You’re wasting your talent_ , Luwin finally said, after Jon said no to skating with Val. That was all his former coach had to say, and he’d probably wanted to say that for awhile. It made Jon go red, feel ashamed for what he was giving up—and kept him at the rink every day, teaching lessons to pay for ice time so he could skate alone and practice steps and turns to the music of other skaters.

He leans down to start unlacing his other skate because he doesn’t need to see Robb gloat as Jon tells him, “I’ll keep skating with Sansa, as long as she’ll have me.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love feedback.


End file.
